EE most reliable network, says Ofcom

Ofcom says EE is the fastest mobile network for surfing in the UK, but also says their testing might not be 100 per cent reliable, so users should take their results with a grain of salt, while choosing their next operator.

Ugh, confusions, confusions.

Let’s take it from the top: the communications regulator tested EE, O2, Vodafone and Three in a number of cities across the UK, for load times and download speeds.

The results of the test, which took place in December 2015, were released in the Smartphone Cities report you can find on this link (PDF).

Loading web pages over EE took, on average, five seconds, and they loaded successfully 98 per cent of the time, achieving best results. Average speed was 20Mbps.

Three was second best, taking approximately six seconds to load a page, with a success rate of 95 per cent. Vodafone and O2 achieved the same results, but their speeds were 12Mbps and 10Mbps, somewhat weaker than Three’s 15Mbps.

Load times in London were the slowest, while Cardiff scored best.

But here’s where it gets funny – Ofcom said some of the networks may have been under maintenance at some places where testing took place, so the results might not be a 100 per cent accurate indicator of the true state of mobile networks in the country.

“Our results provide a snapshot of performance in November and December 2015. All operators carried out varying degrees of maintenance on their networks during our test period which may have impacted on their results.1 All results were gathered on a 4G tariff, unless stated otherwise, with our five cities each having comparable levels of 4G coverage during testing.”